|
| | Iraq invasion - 7th Anniversary |  |
| | | كاتب الموضوع | رسالة |
|---|
Dr.Hannani Maya
المشرف العام
الدولة : 
الجنس : 
عدد المساهمات : 61370
مزاجي : 
تاريخ التسجيل : 21/09/2009
الابراج : 
 العمل/الترفيه : الأنترنيت والرياضة والكتابة والمطالعة
 | موضوع: Iraq invasion - 7th Anniversary  الإثنين 22 مارس 2010 - 23:07 | |
| 21.3.10Iraq invasion - 7th Anniversary  by Felicity Arbuthnot
Seven years ago, I wrote: "It feels as if I have a memory of every every building that falls, crushed and broken to the ground. My pain could never be the same as it is for those who are losing those they love, limbs, homes, history and all that is familiar to them in Mesopotamia, the 'land between two rivers' (the great, biblical Tigris and Euphrates) the 'cradle of civilization.' It is only a second-best pain, but it surely feels like the real thing." (1)
I had just returned from Iraq. In Iraq and across the globe, certainty was that another bombardment of enormity and invasion was inevitable and could be unleashed any hour. Over numerous visits to the country since the first onslaught in 1991 - as the US/UK driven embargo squeezed ever tighter, sucking life's normalities and life itself, from an entire nation - I wondered each time if I would be again welcomed. I always was, with warmth, generosity of spirit and spontaneity utterly humbling to someone living in a country responsible for vetoing everything from cancer treatments, Ventolin inhaler for asthma (as pollution overtook Mexico city, due to the vetoing of spare parts for cars) insulin, medical syringes, surgical instruments, even ping pong balls, paper and childrens' toys.
Mind-numbingly, a consignment of several tonnes of shroud cloth fell foul of the Sanctions Committee. Even in death, a being could not escape the embargo.In February 2003, I was welcomed again, unreservedly. Susan, who had the franchise for the little shop in the Palestine Hotel, along with everyone else, beamed, hugged and said: "Welcome home" and showered me with sweets. As a child, she was one of the eight survivors of the Ameriyah Shelter. Her parents, brothers and sisters were incinerated.
It was dark, street lights were off (vetoed spare parts) but the need to feel Baghdad again, the sounds, the smells , overwhelmed. Anyway money needed changing - and a visit to an old friend who ran a liquor store, to later indulge in a glass of inimitable Iraqi arak with friends. (Manufactured by the Iraqi Chemical Company, overindulge and the following day you knew you had finally discovered Iraq's most lethal chemical weapon.)Unhesitating,I sent off, navigating by the oil lamps, or generated light, from shops and homes, in familar Sa'adun Street. .
In the money exchange ("Welcome, Madam Felicity, welcome, welcome again in Baghdad ...") I changed $50 for Iraq's collapsed dinars, about 2,300ID to the dollar (1989 $3 to 1ID.) Great wads were piled up for each $5. Worthless anywhere else, but a fortune for most Iraqis. I walked back, carrying, not concealing, the tell tale black plastic bags the exchanges used - as did most people - with little concern. Now, one would be lucky to make it beyond the door. On the way I bought the arak - more beams, more welcomes - more sweets, with tiny glasses of minted tea. These gracious people are now: "camel jockeys", "rag heads", "sand niggers" - or worse.
Contrasting the safety of Iraq just before the invasion and now are different worlds.
Last year, on the sixth commemoration of the occupation, Dr Suad al Azzawi, an associate Professor at Baghdad University, who has lost her husband, twenty two relatives, fifty friends and suffered through fifteen abductions of "close relatives and people I know and love", to America and Britain's invaders or imported or generated criminality, wrote, of the "New Iraq":
- 72 months of destruction
- $607 Billions spent on the war
- 2 Million Barrels of oil being sold per day
- 2 Million Displaced Iraqis inside of Iraq
- 3 Million Iraqis forced to leave the country
- 2615 professors, scientists, and doctors killed in cold blood
- 338 dead journalists
- $13 Billion misplaced by the current Iraqi government
- $400 Billion required to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure
- 3 hours average of electricity daily
- 24 car bombs per month
- 7 major mafias running the country
- 4260 Americans dead
- 10,000 cases of cholera per year
- At least 1.3 million Iraqis dead since 2003.
Dr Al Azzawi wrote of the deliberate targeting of civilians, and the uncounted additional casualties among children resultant from: " ... unexploded ordinance along military engagement routes." Further: " The direct killing and abuse of children during American troop raids on civilian areas like Fallujah, Haditha, Mahmodia, Telafer, Anbar, Mosul, and most of the other Iraqi cities. The Massacre of Haditha children in 2005 is a good example of "collateral damages" among civilians
This year, she writes of collective punishment, of whole cities being starved "by blocking the delivery of food, aid and sustenance" and then being raided, children especially tormented and deprived. Also of:
"Microbial pollution and lack of sanitation (plus) drinking water shortages for up to 70% of the population caused the death of 'one in eight Iraqi children' before their fifth birthday. (Iraq's child mortality) ".. has been attributed to water borne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, etc ."
Further: ".. exposing other heavily populated cities to chemically toxic and radioactive ammunitions, cluster bombs, napalm, white phosphorous, and depleted uranium (have drastically increased) cancers, deformations in children, multiple malignancies and child leukemia.
Contrasting the safety of Iraq then to "liberation's" hell, is to view another worldChildren in areas like Basrah, Baghdad, Nasriya, Samawa, Fallujah, Dewania and other cities have .. multi-fold increases of such diseases. Over 24% of all children born in Fallujah in October 2009 had birth defects.The Minister of Environment in Iraq called upon the international community to help Iraqi authorities in facing the huge increase of cancer cases in Iraq.
The deterioration of the health system and assassination of doctors have resulted in an increased (mortality) amongst children." In the death toll of up to over a million between 2003 and 2007 the collapse of the health system "is specified as one of the major causes."
"By 2004, it was estimated that two out of every three Iraqi children were dropping out of school ... Prior to the US invasion, UNESCO indicated that school attendance was nearly 100%. Assassination of educators and academics ... drove their colleagues to (emigrate.)" There is a "... cultural cleansing of Iraqi society and identity." (3)
In stark contrast, Professor Martin Yapp points out in: "The Near East since the First World War" (ISBN 0 582 256518 PPR) that after Iraq took the petrolium industry in to state control in 1972, "..the main emphasis was on social and economic development ... health, housing and especially education." UN statistics showed that " .. by 1990 eighty seven percent of Iraqis had clean water, ninety three percent had access to (free) health care ... by 1980 virtually one hundred percent of children attended elementary school ... adult literacy had risen from fifteen percent in 1958 to ninety percent in 1990. The education of women was particularly advanced .."
The revolution was "secular" and "social reforms should be based on what were regarded as universal principles of human development." In seven years, Iraq has been reversed to a failed state and what, were it not US driven, would be called a barbaric one.
Dr Gideon Polya, author of the meticulously researched: "Body Count, Global avoidable mortality since 1950", (4) calls Iraq's mortality between the imposition of the embargo in August 1990, the invasion and this woeful time of reflection: "an Iraqi Holocaust ... an Iraqi Genocide." He has written a letter to the media world wide:
"It is the 7th anniversary of the illegal and war criminal invasion of Iraq by US, UK and Australian forces on 20 March 2003. What has been the human cost? As of 20 March 2010 post-invasion violent deaths in Occupied Iraq total 1.4 million (according to the eminent US Just Foreign Policy).
Post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.8 million and post-invasion non-violent excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) total 1.1 million (based on 2006 revision data from the UN Population Division), this being identical to an independent estimate from under-5 infant deaths.
Gulf War violent deaths totalled 0.2 million and excess deaths and under- 5 infant deaths under Sanctions (1990-2003) totalled 1.7 million and 1.2 million, respectively.
In the period 1990-2010 Iraqi violent deaths totalled 1.6 million, non-violent excess deaths from deprivation totalled 2.8 million, under-5 infant deaths (90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violation of the Geneva Convention) totalled 2.0 million and refugees totalled 5-6 million.This is an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide as per Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (cf WW2 Jewish Holocaust, 5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation.)"(5.)
So seven years on, the world has been brought to statements such as this, by an academic with a five decade scientific career."Why do they hate us?" has been the US Administration's bleat, as they see a "terrorist" in every shadow, behind every computer screen and every arab sounding name.
In all the deprivations of the embargo years, talking to parents who had lost children as a result, burns victims with near-indescribable injuries from the routinely exploding lamps used for lighting (parts for reliable ones embargoed)to the widows, the orphans, I never experienced anything but warmth and hospitality, a gratitude that one had come in friendship and to listen, hear, learn. Except once.
On my last afternoon in Baghdad before the invasion, I walked again down Sa'adun Street. There was a small local barracks amongst the shops and apartments. On my late night walks over the years, I would practice floundering arabic with the young conscripts who sat outside on watch, in a country on a war footing for over thirty years. They would laugh, correct me, repeat for me patiently the soft pronounciation which comes from somewhere deep in the throat, that most westerners find so hard. We would laugh together as I failed in the intonation - and they would laugh again and clap as I finally got it right.
That afternoon, newly called up youths, teenagers, were milling outside, some squatting down in groups under the trees, on the sun-dappled pavement, talking. There was no way through. These were Iraq's future, from university graduates to market workers, their childhood lost to the embargo their future to fight yet another war, not of Iraq's making, against odds that were a no-brainer.
Normally, in a crowd, an innate courtesy extends and it parts, people smile, one passes, smiles returned. They fell silent, looked at this western woman, the embodiment of all they were going to endure - or not survive. After all the years, I finally saw cold hate in those young eyes. And I understood absolutely.Little after dawn the following morning, I went in search of coffee, before the up to twenty seven hour journey to Amman and a flight home (flights still ninety nine percent vetoed.) The musac in the restaurant was quietly playing: "I left my heart in San Francisco."
Ironically, along with a number of others who braved a few hazards over the years ( US and UK bombings being high on the list) I am one who has been warned by sound sources, that if I return to democratic, liberated, free Iraq, I will be killed. Risk taking has been a way of life. Suicide is not an option.
Posted by Iraq Solidarity UK at 7:22 AM 0 comments Links to this post   The Iraq War Seven Years Later  by T r u t h o u t
We are still shocked. We were never awed. We have not adjusted. The senseless waste of our blood and treasure, our honor and our reputation continue. Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom - the latter unleashed seven years ago today - have morphed into a single Operation Enduring Occupation, set to bankrupt this country financially as well as morally, to destroy our own security as it has that of the over 31 million people who populate Iraq and 32 million people of Afghanistan.
The Price of Freedom
Operations sold to the American people as protecting our freedoms have been used as part of a corrupt apparatus - like every other protection racket since the beginning of time - to restrict, reduce and infringe on those freedoms, not only the civil liberties enshrined in the early English common law (habeas corpus, trial by jury ) and the Constitution's Bill of Rights (free speech, free association, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment), but also our so-called freedom to shop (the "ultimate repudiation of terrorism" dixit George Bush), undermined not only by the financial collapse and ensuing economic crisis, but also by the inviolability of the federal military budget. Our language has been deformed ("Homeland," "preventative war," "enemy combatant," "enhanced interrogation," "freedom," "security"); our society, militarized and privatized - with the legitimate government monopoly on violence outsourced to military contractors.
Just as heavily-armed Blackwater troops were immediately deployed to Katrina-devastated New Orleans, and the San Diego police department deployed the same long range acoustic devices used for crowd control in Iraq at recent town hall forum there, we expect it will only be a matter of time before other innovations tested against the Iraqis, such as predator drones, are used in operations against US citizens in our homes and cities.
And as Benjamin Franklin might have agreed ("They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." {notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly, 1775}), perhaps we deserve what has happened to us for allowing ourselves to be cowed into colluding in the ultimate crime against humanity, one which the Nuremberg tribunal powerfully condemned: "To initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Justifying Destruction
The Netherlands' Davids Commission was set up by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende in order to avoid a full parliamentary inquiry into the Dutch role in the invasion of Iraq - the sole independent assessment of the war in Iraq's legality - "the authoritative view of seven commissioners, including the former president of the Dutch Supreme Court, a former judge of the European Court of justice, and two legal academics" - "entirely rejects the central argument used to justify the ... claim that there was a legal basis for the invasion":
The [UN] Security Council Resolutions on Iraq passed during the 1990s did not constitute a mandate for the US-British military intervention in 2003. Despite the existence of certain ambiguities, the wording of Resolution 1441 cannot reasonably be interpreted (as the government did) as authorizing individual Member States to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's resolutions, without authorization from the Security Council.
The Dutch government's often repeated view that a second resolution was "politically desirable, but not legally indispensable" is not easy to uphold. The wording and scope of Resolution 1441 cannot be interpreted as such a second resolution. Hence, the military action had no sound mandate under international law.
"The rule of law," something George Bush himself promoted as one of those freedoms requiring "protection," has been wholly distorted as lawyers, security agencies and the press focused on how to abet the executive in getting whatever he wants, including - most shamefully - torture ("Americans were indeed frightened after Sept. 11, and the Bush administration was in a great rush to torture prisoners.") Any idea we may have entertained that no one is above the law, the very concept that lawbreaking should be punished, has been wholly shattered by the conduct of this war and the current administration's near blanket refusal to investigate, let alone prosecute war crimes - due in part, perhaps, to the complicity of its Democratic allies in Congress.
Of course, the loss of our troops (over 4,200 dead and 30,000 wounded) and treasure (three trillion dollars according to economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz), the perversion of our language, the mangling of our laws, the broken bodies and tortured brains of our veterans really bear no comparison with the suffering we have inflicted on the citizens of Iraq.
The Folly of War
We don't know how many Iraqi civilians have died, but, in 2006, The Lancet estimated 655,000 Iraqi deaths imputable to the war and Opinion Research Business - a UK polling firm - estimated 733,158 to 1,446,063 deaths, these on top of the 500,000 "excess deaths" occasioned by the previous US sanction regime. Over two million Iraqis have been displaced. Iraqi professionals of all kinds have been disproportionately targeted by killers and kidnappers, Iraq's infrastructure smashed; no amount of "reconstruction" funds - unknown quantities of which were siphoned off by corrupt American and Iraqi officials, military and businesspeople - have succeeded in restoring potable water, reliable power or any real security to ordinary Iraqi citizens. World heritage archaeological sites have been destroyed and plundered. The outcome of the latest Iraqi elections is not yet clear, but no outcome can return nine-year-old Ali Kinani - the youngest victim in Blackwater's unprovoked Nisour Square assault on civilians - to the parents who loved him, and apparently no outcome is foreseen that will halt Iran's burgeoning political, military and economic influence, suggesting that on purely geopolitical, strategic grounds, the Iraq war has served as a giant Iranian tar baby.
Surely, the Iraq war's only obvious "successes" - the enrichment of the military industrial complex at the expense of ordinary citizens, the implementation of an ever more pervasive and intrusive "security" regime at home and the insurance of a second Bush term - could have been achieved without dragging the long-suffering people of Iraq into it. People - it may still need to be pointed out - who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 and harbored no weapons of mass destruction.
To reprise our founder Franklin again, "All Wars are Follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones."The American is not the first empire to have been corrupted from within and exhausted from without by foreign wars. And unless we wind down the war machine now, we shall surely - and presently - not be the last.
Posted by Iraq Solidarity UK at 7:21 AM 0 comments Links to this post Iraqi Children Rights Under Occupation  by Souad Al Azzawi
I pride myself in being a scientist and a researcher. I built my academic career on theories and numbers. As a teacher, I teach my students that everything is based in science – everything has a reason. That is why, I am always frustrated with myself when I find I am overwhelmed with feelings on specific topics.
One such topic is the occupation of my country, Iraq. On this subject I find that I cannot always be dispassionate. I cannot be the researcher and observer and discuss it without feelings or emotions as I am sometimes expected to do. I find myself doing research on the damages caused by the war and occupation, and my head buzzes with anger, my eyes burn with tears of desperation at the state of my country.
I decided, I would view it as a scientist. I would not attack the subject with emotion. I would let the numbers speak for themselves. This year I will sit back and play the part of the analyst- the researcher- on the topic that is closest to my heart.
We will show that the American occupation violated children’s rights on all levels, including health care, education, social security, family unity and non separation of children from their parents through detention, imprisonment and exile.For two decades, Iraqi children, along with all other elements of Iraqi society, have been subjected to grave violations of human rights.
The American occupation forces, and the occupation-assigned Iraqi government, grossly failed to fulfill their most basic duties towards the children of Iraq in accordance with the UN/CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child, Resolution 25/ Session 44, November 1989. The convention was ratified by 194 United Nations countries, except the USA and Somalia.
Principals of the CRC emphasized the need to protect children’s rights’ to life and physical, mental, moral, and spiritual development in a safe environment.Numerous violations of Iraqi children’s rights have systematically and continuously been committed under the American occupation of Iraq.
We will show that the American occupation violated children’s rights on all levels, including health care, education, social security, family unity and the non separation of children from their parents through detention, imprisonment and exile.
1.Iraqi Children under the Economic Sanctions (1990-2003)
During the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, the country was denied the right to import equipment, medicine, educational items, health care requirements, etc. The economic sanctions were imposed by US/UK administrations and enforced by UN resolution 661 in 1990. The sanctions committee in the UN was dominated by the USA and UK, who insisted on blocking most essentials related to human rights
2.Status of Iraqi Children under the Anglo-American Occupation of Iraq
Thirteen years of suffering and the death of more than half a million children under five as a result of economic sanctions ended with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Iraqi people, and children have had to face the excessive use of power, shock and awe techniques, raids, the destruction of infrastructure, burning and looting of the civil services and cultural centers of Iraq, damage to health care centers and hospitals, and sectarian killing staged by occupation intelligence. Numerous violations of Iraqi children’s rights have continuously and systematically been committed under the Anglo- American occupation of Iraq.
■ Direct killing during the military invasion operations where civilians were targeted directly. Additional casualties amongst children have resulted from unexploded ordinances along military engagement routes.
■ The direct killing and abuse of children during American troop raids on civilian areas like Fallujah, Haditha, Mahmodia, Telafer, Anbar, Mosul, and most of the other Iraqi cities[17]. The Massacre of the children in Haditha in 2005 is a good example of "collateral damage" among civilians.
■ Daily car bombs casualties, explosion of buildings and other terrorist attacks on civilians.
■ Detention and torture of Iraqi children in American and Iraqi governmental prisons. While in detention, the children are being brutalized, raped, and tortured. American guards videotaped these brutal crimes in Abu Graib and other prisons.
■ Poverty due to economic collapse and corruption caused acute malnutrition among Iraqi children. As was reported by Oxfam in July 2007, up to eight million Iraqis required immediate emergency aid, with nearly half the population living in "absolute poverty".
■ Starving whole cities as collective punishment by blocking the delivery of food, aid, and sustenance before raiding them increased the suffering of the young children and added more casualties among them.
■ Microbial pollution and lack of sanitation including drinking water shortages for up to 70% of the population caused the death of "one in eight Iraqi children" before their fifth birthday. Death of young children in Iraq has been attributed to water borne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, etc .
■ Contaminating and exposing other heavily populated cities to chemically toxic and radioactive ammunitions. Weapons like cluster bombs, Napalm, white phosphorous, and Depleted Uranium all caused drastic increases of cancer incidences, deformations in children, multiple malignancies and child leukemia. Children in areas like Basrah, Baghdad, Nasriya, Samawa, Fallujah, Dewania and other cities have been having multifold increases of such diseases. Over 24% of all children born in Fallujah in October 2009 had birth defects.The Minister of Environment in Iraq called upon the international community to help Iraqi authorities in facing the huge increase of cancer cases in Iraq.
■ The deterioration of the health care system and the intentional assassination of medical doctors have resulted in an increased number of casualties amongst children. It has been estimated that the mortality rate amongst the population of Iraq reached 650,000 from 2003 to 2006. Another survey indicated that the total number of dead for the period of 2003-2007 is about one million. Among other cases, the failures of the health care system were specified as one of the major causes.
■ Damage to the educational system. By 2004, it was estimated that two out of every three Iraqi children were dropping out of school. Statistics released by the Ministry of Education in October 2006 indicated that only 30% of the 3.5 million students were actually attending schools. Prior to the US invasion, UNESCO indicated that school attendance was nearly 100%. Assassination of educators and academics in Iraq drove their colleagues to leave the country. This brain drain and the intended destruction of schools and the educational system is part of the well planned cultural cleansing of the Iraqi society and identity.
■ Total collapse of Iraq's economy, the sectarian violence, American troop raids on civilians, the killing of a dear family member have all deprived the children in Iraq of an innocent, carefree childhood that is the right of any child. They have to deal with family breakdowns, poverty, and a complete and total lack of security. Iraqi children are being forced to assume income generating roles because their families are suffering from hunger and poverty. They are leaving schools and having to deal with adult problems such as unemployment, manual labor, etc. This situation exposes them to hardship, and many forms of abuse. Exposure to violence on a daily basis has affected their psychological development and behavior as well.
■ The drastic increase in the number of orphans in Iraq. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs estimated the number of Iraqi orphans to be around 4.5 million. Other estimates put them at around 5 million. About 500,000 of those orphans live on the streets without any home or family or specialized institutions to take care of them. Among these orphans, 700 are in Iraqi prisons and another 100 in American prisons.
■ The problems of families who were forced to migrate and the impact on their children. Since the invasion of Iraq, there have been about 2.2 million internally displaced people who were forced to migrate due to sectarian violence, American violence, etc. Well over two million other Iraqis were driven out of Iraq. On November 20, 2007 UNESCO reports indicated that the number of Iraqi children taking refuge in Syria alone was around 300,000. The problems of children who have been forced to migrate represent a real humanitarian crisis where a large number of families have no shelter, no finances, no health care, no education, and no security of any kind.
3.Deterioration of Living Conditions of Displaced Iraqi Children
This case study was conducted by the author with the help of the Iraqi Women Will body (IWW), an Iraqi NGO fighting for Iraqi women’s rights inside and outside of Iraq.In October 2009, around 300 copies of the questionnaire were distributed to Iraqi families within the Yarmouk refugee area of Damascus, Syria. The researchers visited these families to ensure the accuracy of the answers and to conduct personal interviews.
You can read the case study and the conclusions on the website of The BRussells Tribunal here.
Posted by Iraq Solidarity UK at 7:16 AM 0 comments Links to this post | |
|  | | | | Iraq invasion - 7th Anniversary | |
|
| | صلاحيات هذا المنتدى: | لاتستطيع الرد على المواضيع في هذا المنتدى
| |
| |
| |
من هنا 
من هنا 
من هنا 